Surgical Perspective is a young medical device company focused on innovative single-use surgical instruments. It is seeking funding for its business development through the Happy Capital crowdfunding platform.

After an initial fundraising round in 2013 mainly through the Irdinnov regional fund, Surgical Perspective is seeking €250,000 through the Happy Capital crowdfunding platform.

Objective: make scarless surgery accessible worldwide.

Focus on this innovative company which has developed unique products in a market with endless possibilities.

Instruments already taken up by major French hospitals
Surgical Perspective’s minimally invasive surgical instruments are the result of many years of R&D and have been taken up by over 50 hospitals worldwide, including sector leaders such as Paris’ Pitié Salpêtrière, Henri Mondor University Hospital and Strasbourg’s new civil hospital, as well as a number of private clinics.

Hospitals are increasingly seeking to allow patients to return home as quickly as possible following minimally-invasive surgery and to relieve post-operative pain. Surgical Perspective sees this as a booming market.

The company’s instruments allow surgeons to suspend certain organs and optimise field exposure during an operation, thereby minimising the number of incisions required. This technology is particularly suitable for obesity, gynaecology and urology surgery as well as other common types of surgery such as cholecystectomy.

Patient benefits include a reduction in post-operative pain, lower risk of complication and the possibility to return home more quickly. Advantages for surgeons include fewer instruments in the operating field, optimised field exposure and greater safety.

Crowdfunding for an issue that all of us might face
Surgical Perspective already raised €1 million through Irdinnov and Business Angels in 2013. The company, with its original founders and the same stakeholders, is now undertaking a 2nd fundraising round and is using the Happy Capital crowdfunding platform to raise a minimum amount of €250,000 out of a total of €1 million. As surgery is an issue that all of us might face, Surgical Perspective CEO Frédéric Mouret considers that the crowdfunding platform is an excellent alternative. As he explains:

“We are looking forward to working with the public of Happy Capital as the products we have developed have been designed almost completely with the patient in mind. As well as facilitating the surgeons’ work, these instruments are also indirectly aimed at hospital patients.”

The highly promising international market
About 10 million surgical procedures could potentially use Surgical Perspective technology, while the potential market for retractors for minimally invasive surgery is estimated at €500 million. This offers excellent growth prospects for the company.

The instruments have already proved successful outside France and have been taken up in hospitals in the United States, where Surgical Perspective is starting to expand its sales structure, and also in Austria, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Romania, the Netherlands, Belgium, Norway, Australia and Central America. The company is also seeking marketing authorisations in Asia. Frédéric Mouret adds:

“This funding round will help us increase our operations in national markets where we already operate and in new ones where we obtain marketing authorisation. These are very costly initiatives, but we know that there is every chance there will be a positive outcome.”

Surgery is a worldwide growth market, open to new technologies and with endless marketing possibilities, which are highly encouraging for Surgical Perspective R&D.

Axilum Robotics is a spin-off from a research unit at the University of Strasbourg. The company has designed the first robot for treating major depression and neuropathic pain by transcranial magnetic stimulation

Axilum Robotics is a spin-off from the Strasbourg-based medical robotics research group ICube. The company was founded in 2011 by Michel de Mathelin, Bernard Bayle and Pierre Renaud along with 2 PhDs in medical robotics – Benjamin Maurin and Romuald Ginhoux – and also Michel Berg, a medical doctor and graduate of HEC business school. It is developing and marketing the world’s first robot for transcranial magnetic stimulation(TMS), based on a proof of concept developed by ICube.

What is TMS ?

Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation is a functional treatment for depression, which acts directly on the functions of the tissues producing neurotransmitters and encourages their natural secretions. Neuroimaging has shown depression is associated with areas of hyperactivity and hyperactivity. TMS relieves the symptoms and restores normal activity within the affected areas.

There are several protocols for TMS, some of which are applied to activate the affected areas and vice versa.

The protocols are determined by the doctor, clinical observation and also by specific psychological tests.

TMS has the added benefit of being non-invasive, with few or no side effects and is very well tolerated by patients.

Samuel Bulteau, a psychiatrist at the Nantes University hospital estimates that “only 1 to 3% of patients stop the treatment prematurely, as opposed to 30 to 40% for drug-based treatments.” TMS therefore offers a welcome option for healthcare professionals treating patients with depression resistant to antidepressant therapy and is an interesting alternative to electroconvulsive therapy, formerly known as electroshock therapy, which is highly effective but requires a general anaesthetic.

TMS applications:

Obsessive-compulsive disorders

Anxiety disorders

Stress post-traumatic depression

Addictions

Eating disorders

Auditory hallucinations

Tinnitus

Chronic pain

Axilum Robotics estimates that some 4 million people in France suffer from chronic neuropathic pain, while a further 6 million have a depressive disorder. Drug therapies have proved ineffective for a large number of these patients and TMS offers them a genuine, non-invasive alternative. This easy-to-use therapy can also be applied to treat the sequels of strokes, which affect some 150,000 people every year.

An application which is steadily becoming part of public healthcare

Michel Berg, CEO of Axilum Robotics gives his vision of the future: “TMS treatment has been covered by health insurance in the United States since 2012 and in Germany since 2014. France is a little behind, but the situation is improving, especially in Strasbourg, where a research team led by Professor Foucher, who came up with the idea of Axilum Robotics, is supporting the change process. The technological risk phase is now behind us and we are focusing on expansion of the market, productivity, a higher level of reimbursement and the quality of the therapy provided by the robot.”

The robot is already in use in France, Spain, Denmark and Brazil and is soon to be introduced in Canada. A robot is also to be included within a treatment unit in Strasbourg’s civil hospital, to be opened in June.

Berg adds that “This is the first time an outpatient unit will be covered by health insurance for the treatment of depression and pain.”

Axilum Robotics recorded net sales of €700,000 in 2015, based solely on exports, and hopes to top the 1 million mark this year. After fund-raising rounds in 2012 and 2015, the company is working to raise €500,000 in new funding this year to finance the extension of its range and also to make the first inroads into the potentially-profitable American market.

The French Inter-Ministerial Centre for Forecasting and Anticipating Economic Change (Pôle interministériel de prospective et d’anticipation des mutations économiques – PIPAME) has carried out a study of the e-health market in France and worldwide, through consultants Care Insight and Opusline. The study ran from December 2014 to December 2015.

The main point of the study was to find out why the French system has not been able to exploit e-health in the same way as other countries such as the United Kingdom, Japan and South Korea.

Some key figures

The e-health market in France in 2014 was worth some €2.7 billion, which could represent between 28,000 and 38,000 jobs. Telemedicine could provide 10,000 new jobs, including 1000 from remote monitoring.

The market is currently dominated by information systems (hospital information systems, electronic archiving and healthcare professionals’ information systems), which between them accounted for some €2.36 billion in 2014, or 88% of the market.

Medium-sized healthcare companies represented 70% of net sales and 45% of the total number of companies in the market.

A market dominated by small companies

The various segments of the e-health market are dominated in number by small companies.

French start-ups in telemedicine account for 40% of new measuring devices coming on the market, which puts France in a leading position in the segment,

200 companies, averaging 15 employees, have developed, marketed and provide support for a single software application. Only 25% of the companies market several software applications and have over 57 employees.

370 innovation-led SMEs in the healthcare sector are located in the Greater Paris area.

The French government provides backing for the French e-health industry through programs supporting industrial innovation, such as investments for the future of the digital economy, alongside other national initiatives such as French Tech and locally-based competitiveness clusters.

Internationally

No country currently stands out for specific or novel initiatives in e-health. Each country enjoys specific features, advantages and disadvantages, but the key point seems to be how successfully a country manages to bring together the levers which best drive e-health development for patients and healthcare professionals.

These levers include the “public authorities strategy” levers (lever no.1), the “organisation and integration of health care services” (lever no.2), “remuneration and funding” (lever no.5), and “project funding” (lever no.6). Successful export countries, such as South Korea benefit from “export incentive policies” (lever no.7), backed by a policy of excellence in “research and innovation” (lever no. 9), which is a driver for success. E-health solutions need to aim at the high-end market to be successfully exported.

The study ranks the countries according to performance

Very-high-performance countries:

United Kingdom
Spain
United States
Japan
South Korea

High-performance countries:

Canada
Norway
Dubai

Medium-performance countries:

France
Germany

Low-performance countries:

Brazil

France’s lowly position in the e-health rankings seem to result from the difficult roll-out of the DMP individual health records initiative and the lack of any real deployment of telemedicine, despite a number of actions. There does, however, appear to be a move towards relaxing the many rules obstructing the implementation of new solutions.

France is also threatened by a possible future lack of healthcare professionals. While the current situation is relatively stable, the imminent retirement of a large proportion of doctors (42% of doctors in France are aged 55 or more, against 23% in Spain and 13% in the United Kingdom) threatens to cause a shortage.

To sum up, while e-health brings universally recognised benefits, it is being held back by red tape and a lack of support to help drive its rollout.

To find out more about the study and to examine the resulting recommendations, you will find the full report here.

The Alsace Biovalley healthcare competitiveness cluster has been awarded the gold label of the European Cluster Excellence Initiative (ECEI).

The label was awarded in early March, following a two-day audit in 2015 year-end. The ECEI assessed 31 quality indicators in areas ranging from governance, financing and strategy to structure, performance and integration in the healthcare ecosystem. The assessment experts made special mention of the following strong points

integration in the healthcare ecosystem

dedicated services

monitoring and follow-up of activities, members and events

local, national and international visibility and recognition

Alsace Biovalley was awarded 89 out of a possible 100 points.

This award gives official recognition of the quality of Alsace Biovalley’s organisation, services and practices and its strong international scope. Only 15 out of the 69 French competitiveness clusters have so be far been awarded the Gold Label. The label is valid until 2017 year-end, when a new audit will be performed.

A year after it was founded, Emosis has raised 1 million euros Series A for the European launch in 2017 of the first in-vitro diagnostic kit for use in the haemostasis field

Focus on haemostasis disorders

Generally speaking, haemostasis is a process which causes bleeding to stop. This can either occur spontaneously or through a haemostatic procedure (drug, medical procedure, surgery, etc.). Haemostasis is also the process by which blood is maintained in a fluid state within the circulatory system.

Haemostasis disorders, either disease-related or drug induced (some 5% of French people are treated with antiplatelet agents) can occur in the following events:

The haemostasis market is worth over $1.5 billion worldwide and represents 3% of the in-vitro diagnostics market

A successful series A round

Emosis, a French company specializing in developing and marketing in-vitro diagnostic kits, has successfully negotiated a 1 million euro round of funding from the Cap Innov’Est seeding fund. This is the first increase of capital since the founding of the company in January 2015.

The proceeds will be primarily used to market the first in a series of test kits for diagnosing and assessing haemostasis disorders. This first kit, due for launch in the European market in 2017, will be used to confirm the diagnosis of Heparin-Induced Thrombocytopenia (HIT).

HIT is a rare, but life-threatening disorder that is frequently suspected in hospital in-patients treated with heparin. In HIT, heparin (an anticoagulant drug) paradoxically triggers severe clotting complications. Tests currently used for confirming HIT have to be performed by experienced operators in a restricted number of specialized laboratories.

As from 2017, the Emosis test will enable rapid, routine confirmation of HIT on site, i.e. in the medical biology laboratory of the hospital where the patient is receiving care, with significant medical and economic benefits.

Emosis CEO Frédéric Allemand commented: “We are very pleased to have Cap Innov’Est on board. They share our vision to grow Emosis into an international company with a leading franchise in hemostasis diagnostics, a segment with a promising growth outlook.”

Professor Aaron Tomer, MD, MSc, CSO, added: “We are very happy that patients will soon start to benefit from Emosis tests. Our HIT test will be the first of our series of tests to enter medical laboratory and clinical practice, and we are confident that it will very quickly become the ‘go-to’ test to confirm suspected cases of HIT.”

Jean-François Rax, Investment Director at Cap Innov’Est summed up: “This investment gives Emosis the best possible start as they progress their plans to take their first product into the in-vitro diagnostics market. A successful launch will validate the potential of Emosis kits and underline the company’s capability to market this innovative new system

Emosis

EMOSIS is an in-vitro diagnostics company founded by a Franco–Israeli–American team. This team has developed a first-in-class, high-performance and user-friendly system that combines a series of kits and a dedicated device to diagnose, differentiate and quantify haemostasis disorders. The company was created in Montpellier in January 2015 in the Languedoc-Roussillon Incubator site, and was supported by the Business Innovation Center.

Emosis transferred its headquarters to Alsace in October 2015 while keeping a site in Languedoc Roussillon in order to support the future development of regional collaborative projects.

Emosis won the 2013 Concours Tremplin Entreprises, a start-up contest organised by the French Senate and the 2014 Concours ILab, a different start-up contest, organised by the French Ministry of Higher Education and Research, in the creation and development category, which featured a grant of €250,000. The company also won the 2014 NETVA (New Technology Venture Accelerator), an award run by the Office for Science and Technology of the French Embassy in the United States.

Conectus Alsace has announced the signature of a contract for the co-development of the DiabetAlms project with biotechnology company PEP-Therapy.

DiabetAlms is an innovative new treatment for type-2diabetes

The company has developed a new therapeutic approach for controlling blood-sugar levels in type II diabetes patients by targeting adipocytes. This is a major breakthrough for these patients as no similar treatment currently exists. The therapeutic process should also relieve side-effects associated with less specific therapies.

Conectus Alsace is investing over €400,000 in this project, run by Vincent Marion, deputy head of the Medical Genetics Laboratory of Strasbourg (UMRS_ 1112; Unistra-Inserm ; Institut de Génétique Médicale d’Alsace).

The co-development program is a win-win strategy for driving the value of the project and its transfer.

PEP-Therapy is a young, innovation-led biotech company founded in 2014, utilising research conducted by Inserm and the Institut Pierre et Marie Curie for developing targeted therapies for the treatment of severe diseases. It showed its interest in the potential of the DiabetAlms project and the co-development program put forward by Conectus Alsace.

This arrangement offers PEP-Therapy the opportunity to join the project in its earliest stages and to take part in the development of the technical program, by ensuring it is in line with pharmaceutical industry needs and by securing its future clinical positioning. The company will also be involved in designing and developing a new therapeutic peptide (CP&IP, Cell Penetrating and Interfering Peptide) for addressing the target identified by Vincent Marion and his Australian colleague, Prof. Nikolai Petrovsky of the University of Adelaide. PEP-Therapy also holds an exclusive licence option for the use of the candidate drugs and therefore has priority in continuing development following the maturation phase.Over 50% of maturation projects undertaken in 2015 are co-development projects with industry.

Conectus Alsace’s prime aim is turning a public-sector “technology-push” project into a “market-pull” project in line with business needs. One of the main strategies for achieving this aim is co-development in technology maturation, which was launched in 2013. Under this scheme, a company can take part in establishing the maturation program at a very early stage to ensure the technical programs are in line with industry requirements. The company provides its expertise in determining technical program specifications and in return is granted a licence option giving it priority access to the technology. The partnership is a win-win formula designed to increase the value of the projects at the end of the maturation stage. The company can track and guide the maturation programme financed by Conectus Alsace, while the laboratory provides the programme’s industrial foundations. During the project, the partners form a strong, trust-based working relationship.

SATT-Conectus: official supplier of innovations

Conectus Alsace was the first SATT (accelerated technology transfer initiative) to be created in France, as part of the call for projects for the State-sponsored Investing in the Future programme. 100% financed by the French National Fund for Research, which comes under the National Research Agency, Conectus Alsace is run along the lines of a private-sector company.

The company’s work is based on investment in intellectual property, technology maturation and licensing, while it also markets its expertise in joint research and technology transfer programmes.

In 2015, SATT-Conectus underwent a State assessment to examine its future and to establish the 2nd funding tranche to be disbursed over the 3 following years. The assessment concluded that SATT-Conectus had achieved or exceeded its targets and the 2nd funding tranche was raised to €18 million for the period 2015 to 2017 to drive its development strategy.

Aérial is a Technology Resource Centre founded in 1985 specialising in 3 key areas: food processing, irradiation and freeze-drying. The company’s FEERIX project will bolster its technical resources in irradiation and is a further illustration of the dynamic of Strasbourg’s Nextmed medical technologies campus.

A Technology Resource Centre (Centre de Ressources Technologique – CRT) is a structure awarded the eponymous French Ministry of Research label for its work in performing studies, research and development and expert reports for industry. A CRT label is an indication of the innovation led services the company performs for its corporate customers. A CRT also drives research programs, often in partnership with universities or fundamental research laboratories, to anticipate industry’s future needs.

Aérial CEO Alain Strasser explains “it’s a bit like if we were an R&D department which companies use when they need us. Our main target is SMEs, even though our specific skills also bring us to work with major groups.”

Arial is located in a building of 1400 m² in the Illkirch Innovation Park. The company has 23 employees, mainly engineers and/or PhDs, supported by higher technicians. The building is split into 4 centres, spread over 2 floors and also includes several specialised laboratories (microbiology lab, physical chemistry lab, a dosimetry lab, a sensory analysis lab, an irradiation lab with an electron-accelerator and an experimental freeze-drying lab).

Irradiation: an internationally-recognised Aérial specialty

Aérial’s work initially involved studying food irradiation, a technique for preservation and decontamination, at the Strasbourg Centre of Nuclear Research. As the company’s skills range broadened, it began to cover all aspects of food quality (microbiology or safety, nutritional and sensorial quality) and it started working closely with regional agribusiness companies.

Aérial also wanted to see how it could expand outside the food business. The technology has many applications, including the sterilisation of single-use medical devices, implants and pharmaceutical products, the improvement of polymer physical and chemical properties, surface treatment, grafting, environmental applications (land decontamination, fumes, etc.) and other somewhat more unexpected applications, such as colouring semiprecious stones with electron beams.

“To put it simply, in industry radiation means submitting a product to electron beam, x-ray or gamma radiation to improve its properties. This could be, for example, making it sterile for a medical device or making a plastic component more resistant to temperature extremes.”

Aérial’s team of physicists have acquired considerable expertise and worldwide recognition in irradiation process control (dosimetry). The company is now the only French laboratory accredited by COFRAC, the French accreditation committee, for measuring high radiation doses and develops dose-measuring instruments for manufacturers and laboratories worldwide. Aérial is the only French laboratory approved by DGCCRF (the French directorate general for competition, consumer affairs and the prevention of fraud) for the detection of irradiated foodstuffs.

Aérial has also seen its reputation confirmed by being one of 15 companies selected worldwide to contribute to a research programme initiated by IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Agency. This five-year project involves the irradiation of food by electron beams and x-rays, a technology for preserving foodstuffs which is enjoying considerable growth outside Europe, especially in Asian countries. The project began in Vienna, the headquarters of the IAEA in October 2015. Aérial is providing its expertise and acting as a consultant to all the participating teams.

The FEERIX project

The FEERIX (electron-beam and x-ray radiation) project is included within the 2015-2017 three-year “Strasbourg European capital” contract and is recognised by the University of Strasbourg as an “initiative of excellence. The project sets out to build a unique R&D and training facility in the Illkirch Innovation Park, featuring a Rhodotron, built by Belgian company IBA. The Rhodotron is a high-power E-beam accelerator and X-ray generator with two separate beam outputs for studying the full range of multisectoral irradiation applications.

Rhodotron and IBA

The Rhodotron is considerably more bulky than Aérial’s current accelerator, which means room will need to be made for it. The building extension will be carried out with the Region as the contracting authority and is due to be completed by 2018 year-end. The cost of the project works out at about €10 million and will be co-funded by the State, the Region, the Eurometropolis of Strasbourg and FEDER, as well as IBA, a long-standing partner of Aérial.

Strasbourg’s medical technologies campus is located within the city’s central hospital, in the city centre. The recent acquisition of 1.5 ha of land and buildings will allow it to expand to accommodate a new technopark.

The land, which consists of some 30,000 m² of building land, including 7000 m of rehabilitated space, has been bought from Strasbourg University Hospital by the Eurometropolis for €6 million. It is to be used for building a dedicated technopark for companies in the medical technologies and digital healthcare sectors, and is due to be completed by 2020.

The park will offer modular, versatile workspaces for up to 50 companies ranging from start-ups to medium-sized companies, including subsidiaries of major groups looking to invest in a booming campus. Up to 2000 new jobs are expected to be created.

The new technopark will be a genuine business driver for the territory and will also be an invaluable resource for companies already established in the incubators on and around the campus (IRCAD 2, pH8, Haras biocluster).

The campus, managed since its launch in 2012 by the Eurometropolis, in partnership with the University Hospitals of Strasbourg, the University of Strasbourg and the Alsace Biovalley competitiveness cluster, covers an area of some 30 ha, dedicated to the medical ecosystem and features a wide range of members, from faculties and laboratories to innovation-led companies and healthcare facilities. The excellence of the projects coming out of the campus has resulted in a number of grants from the State-sponsored Investing in the Future plan.